The Brazilian Federal Police filed charges against former President Jair Bolsonaro for fraud in the Covid-19 vaccination certificate, local media reported.
According to an EFE publication, The authorities see signs of association to commit a crime and the use of false data within the case that investigates an illicit network in which the military, advisors, politicians and doctors supposedly participated to falsify vaccination cards, from which Bolsonaro and those closest to him apparently benefited.
According to the investigation, there was a plot set up to falsify anti-Covid vaccination cards with the aim that their beneficiaries could bypass health restrictions in third countries during the pandemic.
In the final report, the police named Bolsonaro’s former aide-de-camp, Lieutenant-Colonel Mauro Cid, and federal deputy Gutemberg Reis, from the Brazilian Democratic Movement (MDB) party.
Prosecutor’s Office that will analyze the conclusions of the Police
Now it will be the Prosecutor’s Office that will analyze the Police’s conclusions and decide whether or not to present a formal complaint before Justice against Bolsonaro. who is investigated in other processes, among them for the attempted coup d’état after the 2022 elections, which the current ruler, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, won.
Fábio Wajngarten, spokesperson and one of the lawyers of the far-right leader, criticized on his social networks “the leak” to the media of the opinion of the Federal Police.
«Es It is unfortunate when the authorities use the press to communicate a formal actor that logically should have a technical and procedural covering and not a media and partial one.«, he expressed.
Background
In May 2023, the Police searched Bolsonaro’s house in Brasilia in the framework of this case and then arrested six suspects.among them Mauro Cid, two of his bodyguards and a soldier who acted as an advisor to the former head of state.
During the course of the proceedings, the authorities detected «the existence of indications of insertion of false data about the vaccine against covid-19″ in relation to the then Brazilian president, who governed between 2019 and 2022.
Official records state that Bolsonaro, who always disdained the impact of Covid and raised doubts about the effectiveness of vaccines, received two doses in an outpatient clinic, but there is no evidence that he was there on the designated days.
Those records were later deleted under the claim that it was an “error.” The same thing happened, on different dates, with the former president’s daughter Laura, 13 years old.
Their allegedly false vaccination data was uploaded and then deleted, supposedly, “to eliminate traces” of possible “criminal behavior,” according to the Police.
Bolsonaro had “full knowledge” of the fraud
The investigation indicates that the former president had “full knowledge” of the “fraudulent insertion of vaccination data”, remaining “inert” in the face of such crime.
Bolsonaro traveled in December 2022, on the eve of Lula’s inauguration, which took place on January 1, 2023, to the United States, where at that time it was mandatory to present an anti-Covid vaccination certificate, a measure that was in force until May of last year. .
The former president spent three months in the United States until his return to Brazil and since then his problems with Justice have multiplied.
*With information from EFE*
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